After I posted about my desire to shelter tiny Caroline from Christian messages, Molly showed me an atheist children's book. It assured its tiny audience that God was made up, just like unicorns and elves. While the book better reflected the current state of my thought on religion than the Christmas-time religious messages I previously said I wanted to protect Caroline from, I didn't want to bring the atheist book into my house either. In fact, the atheist children's book bothered me just as much as "God Made Food", a Christian children's book that came in a pile of handmedowns we got from someplace.
See, this is what really bothered me about Christmas. (I've already been snoped on something I said in my Christmas post, which really bums me out, because I was really hoping that Christmas caused suicides. I was even willing to wager that the festivals in other religions didn't cause suicide the way Christmas did, and that neither did Christmas as it is practiced outside of the USA. Now I will have to find other reasons to hate Christmas.) I'm not really bothered by the failings of christianity vis-a-vis my idealized vision of Buddhism. It's the evangelism.
I tell my students that when you enter a conversation with someone, you shouldn't expect the other person to change their minds any more drastically than you are willing to change your own mind. I'm not sure where I first head this rule (Habermas?) but it strikes me as both a basic piece of courtesy and a foundational principle of collective rationality. We need it both to live together decently and to form an effective knowledge-seeking community. Anyone who enters tries to convert you without themselves being open to conversion is, ironically, speaking in bad faith. My irrational aversion to public displays of Christianity comes only because in my own experience, Christian evangelism is more associated with this sort of bad faith than other religions.
This makes messages given to children especially sensitive. Children believe what they are told naturally and automatically. No adult could ever be as able to accept ideas as a child. I think you exploit a child by pumping her full of belief, of catechisms and creeds and the shibboleths that separate tribe from tribe. Better to impart the values and habits of careful belief formation, than any dogma.
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Hi Rob, I completely agree with your reservations on Evangelism.
I myself am a Christian, and the irony is, whenever I come across "evangelists" with their pushy attitude and so on, lifting their arms into the air, it gives me a deadly chill, almost like that of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
It is difficult for me as a Christian to meet fellow Christians whom I feel comfortable with. It has become so difficult to tell who you can really have a discussion with, just sharing your personal journeys, as opposed to a kind of forceful one way talk.
Christians are bound to have different views on the Bible. Evangelists seem to think there is "only one way". Anyone who disagrees with them "must not be Christian". This is just so disturbing. Naturally, we are all on different journeys, but our destinations are the same.
I did not discover Christ through anyone else. It was a personal journey. You meet people on the way, but as you say, I don't believe they cannot "convince" you of one thing or another, anymore than I could now be unconvinced of the truth of Christianity.
I live in Japan, and I have had many a conversation with friends who are Buddhists about our faith and so on. I think we can both understand why each other chose their faiths, without having to tell each other "your faith is wrong".
In my experience, not all Christians fit a singular mold. Hope that sheds some light around.
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